1. FACULTY OF ARTS AND LITERATURE UNIVERSITY OF MOSTAGANEM
Department of English
Fundamental Contexts in Language Teaching
Dr. Bel Abbes Neddar
THE SCOPE OF LINGUISTIC DESCRIPTION (II)
Chomsky’s model is related to the notion of innateness. He is interested in a model of
language that reflects universal features of the human mind. Indeed, from the U.G.
perspective, the essential nature of language is cognitive. It is seen as a psychological
phenomenon: what is of primary interest is what the form of language reveals about the
human mind. But this is not the only perspective, and not the only aspect of language, that
warrants attention as being pre-eminently human. For although language may indeed be, in
one sense, a kind of cognitive construct, it is not only that. It also, just as crucially one might
claim, functions as a means of communication and social control. True, it is internalized in the
mind as abstract knowledge, but in order for this to happen it must also be experienced in the
external world as actual behaviour.
Another way of looking at language, therefore, would see it in terms of the social functions it
serves. Indeed, one requirement of language is that it should provide the means for people to
act upon their environment, for the first person (ego) “I” to cope with the third person reality
of events and entities “out there”, to classify and organize it and so bring it under control by a
process of what we might call conceptual projection. In other words (Halliday’s words)
language has to serve an ideational function (the function whereby you conceptualize the
world out there). Another necessity is for language to provide a means for people to interact
with each other, for the first person “I” cope with the second person “you”, to establish a basis
for cooperative action and social relations: so language needs to discharge an interpersonal
function as well. Finally, language has to provide for making links with itself and with
features of the situation in which it is used. We call this the textual function since it is this
what enables the speaker or the writer to construct ‘texts’, or connected passages of discourse
that is situationally relevant; and enables the listener or reader to distinguish a text from a
random set of sentences. In a lecture given at the Institute of Education, University of
London on 02.02.1995, Widdowson referred to these functions using the concept of trinity
( his own concept actually ) which can be illustrated as follow:

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I ( I)
II ( You ) III ( Other persons )
Interpersonal relation with a Ideational, referring function
reference to the world out.
Neither Chomsky, who is interested in the forms that language takes, nor Halliday who is
concerned with the function that these forms serve, talk about how to use language for
communicative purposes. And so, it is also argued that knowing a language also includes
how to access grammar, and other formal features of language, to express meanings
appropriate to the different contexts in which communication takes place. This too is a matter
of function, but in different sense. Here, we are concerned not with what the language means,
that is to say, the internal function of forms in the language code, but with what people mean
by the language, that is to say, what external function forms are used for communication.
Knowledge in the abstract has to be made actual and this is normally done by putting it to
communicative use, not citing random sentences. People do not simply display what they
know. They act upon it, and their actions are regulated by conventions of different kinds. So,
according to this point of view, competence is not only knowledge in the abstract, but also
ability to put knowledge to use according to convention.
There are then two ways of revising Chomsky’s conception of competence, of redrawing the
lines of idealization in devising a model of language by including aspects which reflect the
nature of language as a communicative resource. This results in a functional grammar and, we
may say, broadens the concept of linguistic knowledge.
Secondly, we might extend the notion of competence itself to include both knowledge and
the ability to act upon it. Performance, then, becomes particular instances of behaviour which
result from the exercise of ability and are not simply the reflexes of knowledge. Ability is the
executive branch of competence, so to speak, and enables us to achieve meaning by putting
our knowledge to work. If we did not have this accessing ability, it can be argued, the abstract
structures of knowledge-this purely linguistic competence-would remain internalized in the
mind and never see the light of day. We would spend all our lives buried in thought in a

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paralysis of cognition. Since this ability is only activated by some communicative purpose or
other, we can reasonably call this more comprehensive concept communicative competence.
Level of description
First of all I see it of paramount importance to explain what I do mean by the expression level
of description. Indeed, this expression is used here to refer to the way units of language
combine horizontally and syntactically.
Linguistic signs, said Saussure, enter two kinds of relationship. Any sentence, e argued, is a
sequence of signs, each sign contributing something to the meaning of the whole, and each
contrasting with all other signs in the language. This sequence can be seen as a syntagmatic
relationship – that is, a linear relationship between the signs which are present in the
sentence. For example, in the sentence He can go tomorrow, we have a syntagmatic
relationship, consisting of four signs in a particular order. We would refer to this particular
configuration of signs, defined in a more abstract way ( e.g. Pronoun + Auxiliary + Main
Verb + Temporal Adverb ) as a structure. Now in addition to the syntagmatic relationships
that we can see in a language, there are also paradigmatic ones. A paradigmatic relationship
is a particular kind of relationship between a sign in the sentence and a sign not present in the
sentence, but part of the rest of the language. For instance, in the above sentence, there is a
clear relationship between the first sign he and the other signs she, you, I, etc. This set of
signs form a little system in themselves ( ‘the personal pronoun sub-system’ ), one of which
can be used at this point in the structure, and only one ( we cannot have ‘You he can go
tomorrow’, for instance). Putting this another way, we have a ‘choice’ as to which sign we
can use at any place in the structure. The signs at the paradigmatic level have apermissible
place in the same environment. It is worth noting, in passing, how in a system of this kind the
meaning, or ‘value’, of each sign in the system is derivable by reference to the other signs
which are co-members of it. The pronoun system is a particularly clear example : we can
gloss the meaning of he by saying ‘third person, male, singular’; but we could also ‘gloss’ it
by process of elimination, as in ‘X can go tomorrow, and X is not I, you, she, he or they’.
We thus have another dichotomy, of syntagmatic vs paradigmatic, as illustrated in the
following diagram:
He---------------can------------go--------------tomorrow ( syntagmatic relationship )
She may come soon
I will ask next (paradigmatic association)
You could sleep now

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Disclaimer:
I have no claim of originality so far as this paper is concerned. In fact, it has been prepared by referring to my
personal notes taken during a lecturer given on 02.02.1995 by H.G. Widdowson and the bibliographical list
mentioned below from which passages have been taken integrally. My job consisted simply in combining these
different sources to make- and I hope I did manage in that- a homogeneous paper.
Crystal, D. ( 1985 ) 2nd ed. Linguistics London: Penguin
Halliday, M.A.K.( 1970) “Language structure and language function” in Lyons, J. (ed.) New
Horizons in Linguistics Penguin: London
Widdowson, H.G. (1996) Linguistics Oxford: University Press